There will be no football this weekend for the first time in a long time. We have the Super Bowl next weekend and that's it. What are we going to do to pass the time?? Former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Sarah Shahi is here to help take us into the weekend though, and that should help soften the blow. She's got this new show on USA called Fairly Legal that looks decent, but I haven't had time to check it out yet. Maybe I'll get to that this weekend sometime, since there won't be any football.
1. Royals pitcher Gil Meche is retiring from baseball, and giving back the last $12m of his contract to the Royals. This story is pretty amazing, not to mention very refreshing to hear. An modern athlete that is not out for every dollar he can get? Pretty few and far between these days. Tyler Kepner has a story in the New York Times that is a great read.
But Meche knew the Royals really signed him to start games and log innings. His deteriorating shoulder, surgically repaired twice in 2001, would not allow him to do that. As a divorced father of three, he believed his children — ages 7, 5 and 3 — needed him more than his teammates did.
Meche told the Royals’ general manager, Dayton Moore, that he did not want any of the paycheck due him. No settlement, no buyout, no strings. The Royals had been roundly criticized for signing Meche in the first place — he was 55-44 with a 4.65 earned run average in six seasons for the Mariners — and Meche believed they had already paid him enough.
2. Clippers owner Donald Sterling claims that Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin are going to be Clippers for life. This is probably the only thing in Blake Griffin's life right now that can be classified as "not great." Between having the money he has now, getting the girls you know he's getting regularly (whenever he beckons), and just living the LA lifestyle that a young man with truckloads of money can live, this news has got to be an absolute buzzkill for Griffin.
Luckily for him, the players seem to have all the power in the NBA now-a-days. So he doesn't really have to worry much about it in the long run. As we're currently seeing play out with the whole Carmelo Anthony situation, if an NBA player decides he doesn't want to be somewhere, it doesn't really matter if he's under contract or not...he usually leaves town one way or another.3. Yankees president Randy Levine calls Rangers new owner Chuck Greenberg 'delusional'. Rangers owner Greenberg came commented that it was the Rangers that kept Cliff Lee from signing with New York and that he was glad Cliff Lee was in the National League and not with the Yankees.
Randy Levine then responded with this shot, "I'll be impressed when he demonstrates he can keep the Rangers off welfare. What I mean is make them not be a revenue-sharing recipient for three years in a row, without taking financing from baseball or advance money from television networks. Then I'll be impressed."
Stay classy, Randy Levine. Greenberg said nothing about finances or money and didn't seem to take a direct shot at the Yankees, per se. And Levine responds by saying "hey, we're rich and you're poor, so shut up." Nice touch there. My uninvited two cents (because I love bashing the Yankees): Levine's lucky that baseball doesn't have any salary cap in place, or he and his bosses may have to actually think and use their brains to build a competitive baseball team, rather than just throwing money at every free agent on the market and to see if it sticks.
Have a good weekend, people.
